Waiting for Skylake MBP thread

[OSX7]

Im betting on:

2 - Thunderbolt 3 ports (USB-C 3.1, PCI-E x4, HDMI 2.0, DP 1.2 x8, USB-PD)
1- Headphone Jack
1- SDXC card reader
? - Magsafe?

P.S. The maximum amount of TB3/USB-C ports you are going to get is two, since the Thunderbolt controller only supports a maximum of two ports. If Apple chooses to integrate a second TB3 controller, we will get more than 2 ports. But they would have to take PCI-E lanes away from the CPU that would otherwise go to components such as the SSD and the dGPU.

 

[richinaus]

Im betting on:

2 - Thunderbolt 3 ports (USB-C 3.1+ PCI-E x4, HDMI 2.0, DP 1.2 x8)
1- Headphone Jack
1- SDXC card reader
? - Magsafe?

P.S. The maximum amount of TB3/USB-C ports you are going to get is two, since the Thunderbolt controller only supports a maxes out at two ports. If Apple chooses to integrate a second TB3 controller, we will get more than 2 ports. But they would have to take PCI Lanes away from the CPU that would otherwise go to components such as the SSD and the dGPU.

Good point. And your list seems reasonable to me.
I will be looking some kind of dock for mine so that I only unplug one cable when I need to move [new 4K monitor hopefully....]

Actually if no new monitor is announced I will likely go for a low - mid range off the shelf 13" and get an iMac. If it is I will get the top end 13" and monitor got to have the plan ready. My GF would kill me if she knew the plans.........

 

[Lisdexic]

My demands are not outrageous:
...
5. New keyboard needs to include the butterfly mechanism (albeit, at what travel I don't know)
...

Omg please... I love mac hardware except for this. Keyboards are loose, clacky and non-smile keys... Everything on the mac is incredible quality and then there's the keyboard lol.

 

[Arthur75]

Good point. And your list seems reasonable to me.
I will be looking some kind of dock for mine so that I only unplug one cable when I need to move [new 4K monitor hopefully....]

Actually if no new monitor is announced I will likely go for a low - mid range off the shelf 13" and get an iMac. If it is I will get the top end 13" and monitor got to have the plan ready. My GF would kill me if she knew the plans.........

Why not go for the Dell 5K 27" ? (or another 4k) ?
What I will do.

Otherwise hope there will be more than 2 USB C ports (even if only 2 of them is TB3)

 

[richinaus]

Why not go for the Dell 5K 27" ? (or another 4k) ?
What I will do.

Otherwise hope there will be more than 2 USB C ports (even if only 2 of them is TB3)

I like the way the Apple screens connect power and data in a couple of cables [maybe one this time !]. Also I am a total sucker for the aesthetics unfortunately so I have little choice.
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Omg please... I love mac hardware except for this. Keyboards are loose, clacky and non-smile keys... Everything on the mac is incredible quality and then there's the keyboard lol.

Sorry but I really liked the macbook keyboard especially over the spongy one on my 15"RMBP [Butterfly could do with a little more travel though]. Things like this will always be up to the individual, however I must say it took me about a week to get used to the butterfly keyboard and once I did all my other mac keyboards felt odd.

 

[t0mat0]

Thought i'd reshape this article from the launch of the iMac, 5 months ago
https://backchannel.com/exclusive-why-apple-is-still-sweating-the-details-on-imac-531a95e50c91


Worth clicking to expand

Why even bother with a desktop computer? After all, only a month ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook, showing off the new & humongous iPad Pro & its new keyboard, proclaimed, “iPad is the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing.” Does that make iMacs relics of a fading past? Steve Jobs himself foreshadowed the question in 2010. “PCs are going to be like trucks,” he said at the D Conference that May. “They are still going to be around [but only] one out of x people will need them.” Could it be that in the mobile age, iMacs, even shiny new ones, are dull engines of computational load bearing?

“It’s not that simple,” says Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing. “We are in an amazing time where there are different ideas competing for your computing life. That’s great — we love that. And we have thought long and deep about what choices we want to offer customers. One is iPad — it can do many things you want to do on a PC, so many that people choose to make it their primary computing device, and it can do that. That’s more true with the iPad Pro than it’s ever been. But that’s not everybody. There are other people who will decide that nothing does the things they need in their lives as well as a Mac.”

Schiller, in fact, has a grand philosophical theory of the Apple product line that puts all products on a continuum. Ideally, you should be using the smallest possible gadget to do as much as possible before going to the next largest gizmo in line.

“They are all computers,” he says. “Each one is offering computers something unique and each is made with a simple form that is pretty eternal. The job of the watch is to do more and more things on your wrist so that you don’t need to pick up your phone as often. The job of the phone is to do more and more things such that maybe you don’t need your iPad, and it should be always trying and striving to do that. The job of the iPad should be to be so powerful and capable that you never need a notebook. Like, Why do I need a notebook? I can add a keyboard! I can do all these things!

The job of the notebook is to make it so you never need a desktop, right? It’s been doing this for a decade. So that leaves the poor desktop at the end of the line, What’s its job?”

Good question. And the answer?

“Its job is to challenge what we think a computer can do and do things that no computer has ever done before, be more and more powerful and capable so that we need a desktop because of its capabilities,” says Schiller. “Because if all it’s doing is competing with the notebook and being thinner and lighter, then it doesn’t need to be.”

Which brings us to the new iMac product line. Despite the fact that Apple revenues and profits are dominated by its iPhone success, it still considers Macintosh as a serious part of its business, and according to Schiller, this iMac is a significant part of that. "This is our soul" Jobs himself said of making a great desktop computer for the consumer.

'[Apple] executives insist on the Orson Wellesian principle of no launch before its time.'

https://backchannel.com/exclusive-why-apple-is-still-sweating-the-details-on-imac-531a95e50c91

It seems like go big or go home - Apple arguably did a great job with the iMac - 5K iMac when Dell was selling the screen alone for a similar price. But as ATP pointed out - skipping a generation like the Mac Pros can put you back years - the GPU might be old already, then they delay refreshes? We await MBP information. A vendor to come out with Iris Pro 580 CPU laptops - guess we might see benchmarks of other manufacturer's products before Apple's.
Next up - Build conference, seeing if the Xeon E5 v4 CPU for the Mac Pro do come in for end of Q1, Apple's end of April earnings call?

 

[Oppenheim]

Good point. And your list seems reasonable to me.
I will be looking some kind of dock for mine so that I only unplug one cable when I need to move [new 4K monitor hopefully....]

Actually if no new monitor is announced I will likely go for a low - mid range off the shelf 13" and get an iMac. If it is I will get the top end 13" and monitor got to have the plan ready. My GF would kill me if she knew the plans.........

No SD card. Seriously. This is 2016.

No flimsy headphone jack.

And no MagSafe. The machine will charge over USB-C. You won't need to be plugged in all the time like the original MagSafe devices (designed back in 2007/2008). With the new CPU and integrated GPU, new OSX, power shavings on all peripherals and a more powerful battery, the battery life will be amazing. Power will be the number one feature of the new MBP.

 

[craigyy]

Something that hadn't been mentioned and I know that's because it's mainly guesswork in this thread... but what do you think is going to happen to prices? If some of these bigger changes come in for example the change to 14" and 16" screen sizes, do you think this would inflate the prices?
The top of the line surface book hasn't really done us any favours if anything it has set a new high end bracket.

 

[WRONG]

No SD card. Seriously. This is 2016.

No flimsy headphone jack.

And no MagSafe. The machine will charge over USB-C. You won't need to be plugged in all the time like the original MagSafe devices (designed back in 2007/2008). With the new CPU and integrated GPU, new OSX, power shavings on all peripherals and a more powerful battery, the battery life will be amazing. Power will be the number one feature of the new MBP.

Why.
Explain to me.

"No SD Card."
Yes, because it's taking so much useful space with its three millimeters. Also, no one really need it for connecting the 99.99% cameras that work with SD, nor with smarthphones which memory is a micro-SD. Seriously, no one.

"No Jack 3.5 mm."
Yes, because now we're talking about three dot five millimeters. A lot of space and weight saved!
And of course my headphones and my monitors won't need it. I can replace it with a super light, super portable adapter, or even better, with an external sound card. Just for saving 3.5 millimeters. Yes, that's the future.

"And no MagSafe."
Yes, because no one need a proper charger. No, I need that one of the three ports on my MBP is also the port for the charger. And of course the battery is going to last forever, I mean, no one make stressful works on their computer! No one playing intense 3D games, no one working on heavy Illustrator files, no one working with CAD or 3D or other intensive applications.

Seriously Apple, please rip off MagSafe and all the other useless ports, and most of all, make the MBP 3.5 mm thinner then the previous generation and 0.5 grams lighter but with the same battery life, and an heavy thermal constriction.
This is really what we all want now.

 

[j1104638]

That is incorrect. Xeon E3-1545M v5 also contains the Iris Pro P580 integrated graphics. It costs $679.00.

http://ark.intel.com/products/93359/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1545M-v5-8M-Cache-2_90-GHz

This is still not the full list.

If you project CPUs they've used previously (no Xeons) on future, Apple will use these for 15" http://ark.intel.com/compare/93341,93340,93336.
There are also three (not two) Xeons which could be used http://ark.intel.com/compare/93358,93359,93354.
Here are all six of them in ascending performance (and price) order http://ark.intel.com/compare/93341,93340,93358,93336,93359,93354. Apart from +- MHz for CPU and iGPU Xeons also offer ECC RAM support.

 

[SwiftBunny]

What I want:
1- New screen (supposedly the new macbook is 30% more energy efficient on that part).
2- Thunderbolt 3 port, compatible with the EGFX extension (allowing amd Connect at least on windows for external gpus on thunderbolt 3)
3- Polaris mobile GPU (option at least).
4- Skylake obviously
5- Internal redesign. Make motherboard smaller --> more battery.
6- Keep at least 2 USB ports
16inch would be the dream, but 15 is fine.

Also, I need those, else the new macbook pro will be a absolute deal breaker.
7- I want a <3 on the keyboard next to the <<
8- A backlighted apple logo on the back of the screen ^^
9- Mustard.

 

[yanksrock100]

I really hope the new Macbook Pros have Magsafe. It is just so convenient having a magnetic connection, anything else would seem like a major downgrade.

Sure, I like the idea of USB C being a universal standard for all devices, however right now in 2016, it is not really common anyways.

 

[j1104638]

I'd say I would prefer if they used one of the USB-C for charging IF... and this is a big IF... if they come up with some magnetic upgrade for the port (and there are certain designs from noname thirdparty producers, I hope Apple can do better) which will hit two birds with one stone - save space and keep magsafe safety.

 

[dukeOfPrunes]

Did the bezels on the MB12 enable an overall thinner display by having rom for LED lighting etc?

If so, expect similar bezels for MB Pro, and consequently 13 and 15" sizes as opposed to 14 and 16.

Also, bezels enable a tapered design toward the edges.

 

[dtsisdead]

The bullet has been bitten! I have officially decided to wait it out until the new Skylake MBPs are released - whenever that may be. I have chosen to spend a portion of the money I had saved on other things (like new tyres for my car, 'cause they are nowhere near as important as a new Apple computer!). I will use some of my tax return from this financial year to buy a sparkly-arkly new [redesigned] Skylake rMBP.

Of course, I will still be keeping an eye on this thread...

 

[Trahearne]

Rumor has it that there are 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air. In my wild dream, Apple would finally consolidate the product stack into 12" rMB (Core M), 13" rMBA (dual-core i5/i7), 15" rMBA (quad-core i7) and 15" rMBP (quad-core Xeon?). The 15" rMBP would perhaps get a redesigned cooling system, and has a discrete graphics card (and a non-Iris IGP).

 

[Serban]

Why.
Explain to me.

"No SD Card."
Yes, because it's taking so much useful space with its three millimeters. Also, no one really need it for connecting the 99.99% cameras that work with SD, nor with smarthphones which memory is a micro-SD. Seriously, no one.

"No Jack 3.5 mm."
Yes, because now we're talking about three dot five millimeters. A lot of space and weight saved!
And of course my headphones and my monitors won't need it. I can replace it with a super light, super portable adapter, or even better, with an external sound card. Just for saving 3.5 millimeters. Yes, that's the future.

"And no MagSafe."
Yes, because no one need a proper charger. No, I need that one of the three ports on my MBP is also the port for the charger. And of course the battery is going to last forever, I mean, no one make stressful works on their computer! No one playing intense 3D games, no one working on heavy Illustrator files, no one working with CAD or 3D or other intensive applications.

Seriously Apple, please rip off MagSafe and all the other useless ports, and most of all, make the MBP 3.5 mm thinner then the previous generation and 0.5 grams lighter but with the same battery life, and an heavy thermal constriction.
This is really what we all want now.

sd card overall has twice or even more the space used, check tear down of any macbook pro, the 3.5 jack is long i think about 2-3cm so 20-30mm
magsafe can be smaller and slimmer i like you cant break your macbook. The 12" macbook no need for magsafe because its too light and when you pull the power cord the macbook will be pulled as well

 

[ABC5S]

No fingerprint reader, no purchase. I'm sick of typing in my passcode to all my password protected sights every day. . I'll keep my 2014 for a few more years and hope someday Apple will provide this.

 

[itsamacthing]

Rumoured, based on the specs from wikipedia:
- 2015 launch
- Chips will use the 14 nm process node. Expect some decent battery life
- Support for DDR4 memory
- Support for PCIe 4.0

I also think that this will be the model where dGPUs and Apple will part ways in notebooks. I don't think we'll see a dedicated GPU, even as a BTO option.

What are your thoughts?

Considering this thread started in 2013, it's very possible we might have to wait till 2017. Or maybe Nokia can go ahead and make us our new notebook?

 

[WRONG]

Those are the ports Apple "needs" to eliminate.
Fine, let's assume Apple will do it.
What are their substitutions?
How is Apple going to replace them?
An adaptor maybe?
Yeah, saving space for carrying around more things.
Really, I don't see any proper solution.

And this should be the design task: find solution to a problem.
MacBook Air? Problem: heavy laptop for light use -> Solution: eliminate heavy parts, like HDD and DVD reader, and thick ports; and flash-based architecture.
MacBook? Problem: as old MacBook Air, heavy laptop for light use -> Solution: eliminate heavy parts, this time the fans, and shrink the logic board.
MacBook Pro? Almost the same problem as Air, almost the same solution, but maintaining useful ports.

Redesigned MacBook Pro. Problem? Its design is old. And let's assume it's heavy.
What is the solution? We get rid of ports which are maybe the 2% of the total weight?
Ok, let's do it. And now how we solve the problem of not having ports?

 

[hfletcher]

Well, M.2 is actually the PCI-E Standard. I know that Apple makes a firmware that renders the traditional M.2 SSDs unusable on Macs.

I just looked into this further, it seems that the current 2015 MBP's do actually use an M.2 slot for PCIe SSD's, however Apple uses a much rarer physical connection layout - essentially you will not be able to use any 'off the shelf' components like the Samsung 950 Pro to upgrade it.

I do wonder if storage will continue to be replaceable or if in the new models they might just solder it to the motherboard to save space?

 

[itsamacthing]

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50/
Xeon, Finger scanner, 64GB of ECC, 3 HDDs, Quadro, RAID

 

[KohPhiPhi]

Quite frankly, I don't think we need a revolution - just an update to 2016 industry standards:

1) Screen: thinner bezels and (maybe) 4k resolution. I'm happy to keep the 13" and 15" formats.
2) Ports: Two TB3, keep headphone jack, and keep MagSafe (it's saved my computer a dozen times).
3) CPU and GPU: Skylake and 580 Iris Pro. I don't think a dGPU is necessary unless they put something worthy (960m or better) because... quite frankly, putting a mediocre m370 in a $2500 laptop is shameful. Besides, waiting for Polaris would probably push the update to Q3 2016 and I cant wait that long.
4) Battery, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, webcam, thickess, case design, etc: I'm happy to keep the same as current model - they're among the best in the industry anyway.

So... yeah: we don't need to re-invent the wheel, just a 2016 version of the same good ole

 

[dukeOfPrunes]

I an most curious about whether the rumored ultra thin 13" will be a replacement to the Air or Pro, or some kind of merger.

Specifically, will the 13" be built around 15W chips (Air) or 28W chips (Pro)? This choice dictates a lot of the design due to thermal handling.

Frankly, I don't think Apple wants two 13" models in addition to the MB12. Unless they can make the design flexible for both chips. Otherwise too similar in size, weight, performance, design, etc.
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http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/p-series/p50/
Xeon, Finger scanner, 64GB of ECC, 3 HDDs, Quadro, RAID

... coming in at 5.6 lbs.

 

[PTLove]

I an most curious about whether the rumored ultra thin 13" will be a replacement to the Air or Pro, or some kind of merger.

Specifically, will the 13" be built around 15W chips (Air) or 28W chips (Pro)? This choice dictates a lot of the design due to thermal handling.

Frankly, I don't think Apple wants two 13" models in addition to the MB12. Unless they can make the design flexible for both chips. Otherwise too similar in size, weight, performance, design, etc.
[doublepost=1459174201][/doublepost]

... coming in at 5.6 lbs.

I dont mind 5.6 pound laptops personally. Lenovo offers a range that goes from Ultra-Thin 11" to super big and bulky (yet super powerful) chunkies. I wish Apple had the same variety.